bubble gum wrapper
by ncfan
Summary: -Neville- They tell him to be brave. They tell him to suck it up. But really, all Neville wants is a "Hello" when he walks through the door.


**Characters**: Neville, Alice, Frank, Augusta**  
Summary**: They tell him to be brave. They tell him to suck it up. But really, all Neville wants is a "Hello" when he walks through the door.**  
Pairings**: None**  
Author's Note**: In my opinion (I'm sure all of you have somewhat different opinions), apart from Dobby dying the scene in _Order of the Phoenix_ where Neville's visiting his parents is easily the most heart-wrenching scene in the entire series.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own _Harry Potter_.

* * *

_He's not ashamed. He's not ashamed, no matter what Gran thinks or says or declares pompously to the crowd. How can he be ashamed? His parents are heroes… But Neville has, from his parents and from all those deaths during the First War, an all too realistic view of what happens to heroes._

_Heroes die._

_Or end up like Frank and Alice Longbottom._

_He says not a word to anyone, keeping quiet, never speaking. Neville isn't ashamed. But how does he tell someone, anyone, that the reason he lives with his grandmother is not because his parents are dead (he's sure that's what all his classmates assume), but because his parents are insane, and have lived at St. Mungo's since he was a baby?_

_How does he tell someone that they don't know him when he walks through the door?_

Christmas has never been a happy time for Neville Longbottom. Every Christmas, for as long as he can remember, his grandmother has taken him to St. Mungo's every Christmas to visit his parents. Before entering school, he visited them three times a year—on Christmas and on each of his parents' birthdays, respectively—but since both of his parents' birthdays fall during the school year, the visits have dwindled down to once yearly. Gran says it's to bring cheer to them, and Neville supposes he can see the logic in it, but he doesn't think anyone's getting any cheer from this.

Gran usually spends the first fifteen minutes alone with them, before stepping outside and ushering Neville in, allowing him to be alone with his parents.

Each year, Neville manages to shore up just enough hope to think that maybe, when he steps into the private room where Frank and Alice Longbottom stay, that they'll recognize him. That they'll be back in their right minds, and that everyone can go home and be happy again.

But they don't. They never do, and Neville isn't sure why he keeps on hoping.

The two people barely seem alive at all, more like ghosts than anything else. Strands of white hair that have become thin and sparse hang down over their pallid, waxen face. Unfocused eyes stare vacantly, almost unblinkingly in their faces.

Neville can hardly believe that these people were once these parents. That they're _still_ his parents.

However, they are, and he knows they are. These are his parents, the only ones Neville has ever known.

So he tries to talk to them. He asks them if they've had a Merry Christmas, how they are, if they've had any other visitors (They haven't, and Neville doesn't have to get an answer to know that). Neville tells them about school, how he enjoys Herbology and does well there, but that he doesn't like Transfiguration or Potions very much. He talks about his friends, about Harry and Ron and Hermione and Ginny and the others. He talks about how he really feels accepted, for the first time in his life, and that he's never had such good friends.

They barely seem to hear him, and they don't answer. Neville keeps on talking until his throat starts to hurt, because the silence is murderous and he can't bear it when he's with them, but he doesn't expect either of his parents to ever say a word. Neither Frank nor Alice Longbottom have uttered so much as a single word since they were interred in St. Mungo's. Why should they start now, after fourteen years?

They don't know who he is. They don't know who _they_ are. All sense of identity for either Frank or Alice was obliterated by Death Eaters fourteen years ago, and their names when spoken to them are just meaningless words, just like the name 'Neville' means nothing to either of them.

Eventually, Neville runs out of words to say, and he just stares helplessly at them both. Trying to see something of his parents in their faces. And, invariably, he can't. Can't find anything in them that makes them _human_, let alone Frank and Alice Longbottom.

He's not ashamed. But he is at a loss. And still grieving. Because they're not the dead who molder in graves, but the dead who still walk and breathe and make a mockery out of life. And Neville isn't sure which death is more permanent.

Never is he more relieved when he hears Gran rapping sharply on the door, her muffled voice filtering through the cracks, telling him it's time to go.

Neville doesn't hug them when he leaves; he never has. He's afraid that if he tries to hold them to him they'll break in his hands, like old and brittle glass. He's afraid he'll break what little of his parents still remains. They are too fragile for this, too fragile for anything. Neville isn't willing to take chances.

Dad breathes a little sigh and retreats back to bed, where Neville is sure he was before Gran burst in on them; they both spend most of their days sleeping. And Mum…

Mum, with a vacant little smile on her face, will always take a step forward, and draw a bubble gum wrapper out of her pocket, and press it into Neville's hand.

Neville isn't even sure where she gets the wrappers from. The healers don't allow gum on the ward.

Gran raps on the door again, more insistently this time, and Neville knows it's time to go (_But Alice, or the woman-thing that was once Alice, hasn't been given the chance to give the boy who's not her son a bubble gum wrapper this year_).

He steps out the door, and is, to his horror, almost immediately met by four pairs of very familiar eyes.

-0-

_The moment has passed, and Neville and his Gran are on the Knight Bus, speeding along towards home._

_Gran is busy reading the sections of the Daily Prophet that _aren't _making a career out of smearing Harry and Dumbledore. Occasionally, she shoots her eyes over the top of the paper and sniffs disapprovingly at Neville who sits in the seat on the opposite side of the row._

_She thinks he's ashamed. She's wrong, but once Gran has an opinion she'll cling to it with her bony hands until the day she dies, and Neville knows that, for this one, he will never hear the end of it._

_But he's not ashamed._

_Neville's stomach churns and ties itself into knots as he remembers, his throat stinging. The four of them are his friends, but if any one of them had laughed, he would have killed them with his bare hands. No one would have been able to drag him off them quick enough._

_He takes the bubble gum wrapper from his pocket, uncaring if Gran sees it, and runs his thumb slowly over the wax paper, thinking that if he holds it to his nose he can still pick up the sweet smell of the blowing gum._

_This is all the Christmas present Neville's ever needed._


End file.
